stretching silence
by wildflowers
Summary: athrunXnicol; companion fic to "the pier by the lake", but can be read as a stand-alone. war is silent.


War is silent. In space there is vacuum and in a vacuum no sound exists. Life breathes and dies in silence, in explosions terrifying and beautiful. War plays out silently against the darkness, a chess game of breathing pieces, and the screams and cries of dying pawns and bishops and castles are silent. And the grandeur of death is muted, and the beauty of destruction is quiet.

There is no sound in space but the hardness of your own breathing. You are alone in the universe in your cockpit, and even as worlds end before your eyes you are alone. There is only you and the air in your cockpit and the sound of your breath in your ears. Light and fire flash soundlessly over your vision, but because there is no sound it is easy to pretend it is nothing more than an illusion.

-

He is a concert pianist.

The hall is silent as he walks onstage and bows.

And his fingers fly and sound fills the silence.

-

He is a gundam pilot.

The universe is silent as he plunges off his ship.

And his fingers fly and the Umbrella of Artemis shatters.

But there is no sound.

-

Rusty is his best friend. But Rusty dies.

When Rusty dies, he thinks he has lost his hearing. He hears nothing, nothing at all, as he hacks into Blitz's O.S. and takes it off-station. He hears nothing as Heliopolis warps and splinters and shoots into space. He hears nothing as Athrun returns looking shell-shocked and doesn't speak. He hears nothing during the subdued debrief. He hears nothing in the night, not even the words Athrun comforts him with, not even the sound of his own sobs.

Rusty is his best friend.

But in war, friendship means nothing. He says that. _In war, friendship means nothing_. Athrun flinches, and clenches his arm so tightly the skin bruises.

In his memory all that night, Rusty speaks to him. He hears Rusty calling out from his Academy barracks, Rusty saluting their new captain, Rusty wishing him luck before the operation that costs his life. But as the lights go on in the new day, Rusty's voice grows softer, and softer, until all he can see in his mind are pictures without sound. Rusty waving and his mouth wordlessly moving. Rusty at attention and reporting without a noise. Rusty polishing their white boots that get dirty so easily. Rusty looking. Rusty joking. But there are no more words.

And he feels fear, he feels the silence creeping over him, leaching warmth from his soul, crawling into his bones. There is a hole that Rusty leaves, and in that hole is silence. He can see the silence welling up, and spilling out, and blanking out all the noise in the word, and he knows he will go deaf.

For a musician, that is the most terrible thing, to be deaf. For someone who lives in music, who thrills with the beauty of sound, whose heart weeps from the crystal-pure towers of harmony, there is nothing worse than not being able to hear.

-

In silence we are alone. The walls of muteness wrap around us, and we become islands. We see and we touch, but the lack of sound dulls sight and deadens feeling. Colours run, drawing life from the world, and all we see is grey, static that falls like snow, filling our eyes and our ears and our noses and our mouths.

In silence we are imprisoned. We are the sighted blind. And we are alone, with an alone-ness that is irrevocable. We retract and shrink into ourselves, until we are wrapped around our own warm beating hearts and there is nowhere to go and still we are alone. Without sound, reality ceases to be real, and we are left with dreams, of people and places and things, none of which exist, because there is no sound. We are alone. There is loneliness, and there is alone. Silence is alone.

-

"I need you," whispers Athrun, and he hears.

With Athrun around, sound returns.

Athrun is like him. Athrun is driven by the fear of something he cannot name, in the same way that he cowers before silence.

"I need you," Athrun says again, fingers against the small of his back.

He opens his mouth, and in that instant the silence is loudest in his ears, blocking out the world, and he cannot hear see feel touch smell think.

But he can taste, and Athrun tastes warm and soft.

Athrun draws away, and Athrun's eyes are sad. Athrun is so beautiful, his body small and compact, his heart strong and broken. Athrun is so capable, he can do anything, and people trust him. And Athrun needs him.

He opens his mouth. "I love you," he tries. The words have danced in his mouth for a long time, waiting to pierce the veil of silence. He has never said them because he has never thought they would be heard. But he says them, and the silence falls away so easily.

-

The war is no longer silent. In the deep of space, he begins to draw music to the silence. War is a grand pull on the trumpet, a frantic violin, a clear heartbreaking piano.

-

"I love you," he says again. His eyes are closed.

Athrun is above him, and Athrun's face is frantic, fearful. Their space suits lie discarded on the floor, and their undershirts are soft against the faint sweat of their bodies. Athrun breathes heavily in his ear, and his heart is rapid in his chest.

Yzak is screaming in the infirmary as his face is tended to, and they can hear his agony. The smell of the gundam, a smell of metal and oil and fire and blood and death and life, hangs over the room like a shroud, and Athrun is shivering.

"I love you too," says Athrun, and his voice is hoarse and trembling.

It is not true. It is not love that they share, it is need. They need. He needs, and Athrun needs.

It is need that draws them to each other, need born of fear, need born of war. War is desperate and insane and yearning. In war they need. They need to fight, so they can live. They need to kill, or they will be killed. They need to be cruel. They need to forget.

And they need each other. They need each other the way seas need rain, the way plants need light, the way left needs right. They need each other the way love needs hate, the way friendship needs betrayal, the way life needs death.

There is no beauty in need, no poetic songs, no romantic flowers. There is only need. I need. You need. He needs. It just is.

"I love you," Athrun says, and he is crying.

He doesn't know why Athrun is crying, but it makes him cry too. In the tears there is a kind of catharsis. He searches the landscape and finds nothing but wind and rain and darkness, and Athrun, standing out, like a lighthouse, safe and promising and warm.

"I need you," he says. "Please never leave me. Promise me."

Athrun clutches at him, fingers shaking.

He tries to think of a world without Athrun. The silence comes back, white and terrible and blinding.

"Promise me!" he cries.

-

Yzak slams Athrun against the wall. Wanting to know why Athrun didn't fight Strike. Athrun does not answer, but looks dully away. He knows Yzak is not so much angry at Athrun as he is angry at himself, that their four gundams failed to take down one. The fifth gundam, which Rusty should have been flying, which should have been shooting out from their warship behind the other four – not emerging from the belly of the enemy flier as their opponent.

He sees Athrun's defeated face, and his heart twinges.

"I believe in you," he says softly, after the others leave.

Athrun looks at him, and the deadness in his eyes is scary.

"In war, friendship means nothing," Athrun repeats sadly, and he doesn't understand.

-

And he doesn't understand why, as the days pass, Athrun looks more and more lost. Why Athrun fights with his comlink off, why Athrun cries in the bath where he thinks nobody hears, why Athrun clings to him with increasing urgency. He doesn't understand the strange conversation between Athrun and the brown-haired boy on Orb, or why Athrun returns to their ship silent and terrified, or why Athrun believes that the Earth ship is there too. He doesn't understand why Athrun needs him more and more.

But he believes in Athrun.

-

War is unimaginably long. War never ends. War is life, and to live is to fight.

War is also death. War is grief.

And one boy believes in another boy, and dies for that belief.

That boy smiles as he sacrifices his life for the other boy.

It is a beautiful, and terrible, smile.

-

The silence surrounds him. But suddenly, he doesn't fear the silence any more.

-

Athrun opens the locker, and there is a uniform there. It hangs neatly on the metal hanger, waiting for its owner to return.

Sheets of music spill out onto the floor. Sheets of music that are meant to be played, notes that are meant to be translated into sound, into beauty. The notation is printed, black ink against white paper.

But there is no more sound, there is no more beauty. There is only silence.


End file.
